Gridview inside a repeater ondataitembound grid view rebinding - asp.net

Question

I've a repeater which has an asp gridview as following :
<asp:Repeater ID="rep" runat="server" OnItemDataBound="rep_ItemDataBound">
<ItemTemplate>
<asp:GridView ID="grdVw" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="False">
<Columns>
<asp:BoundField DataField="Link" HeaderText="Link" />
</Columns>
</asp:GridView>
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>
then on page load I bind a datatable that contains 20 rows to this repeater:
this is my page load code
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e){
//dummy code for testing
table.Columns.Add("Name");
table.Columns.Add("Link");
DataRow row ;
for (int i = 0; i <20; i++)
{
row = table.NewRow();
row[0] = "dsadsd";
row[1] = "text";
table.Rows.Add(row);
}
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
ds.Tables.Add(table.Copy());
}
rep.DataSource = ds;
rep.DataBind();
}
Then I handle the repeater's ItemDataBoundevent like this:
protected void rep_ItemDataBound(object sender, RepeaterItemEventArgs e)
{
if (e.Item.ItemType == ListItemType.Item)
{
GridView grdVw = e.Item.FindControl("grdVw") as GridView;
grdVw.DataSource = table;
grdVw.DataBind();
}
}
Suprisingly the result is 20 gridviews!! I am thinking this is because ItemDataBound fires on each row in the table. So in this handler event I bind the table 20 times, but is this logically sound or am I doing something wrong?!
I could easily have a flag to make sure that the data has been bound to the table only once, but what if I've bound a dataset to the repeater? How can I handle this binding to the grid views ?

Answer 1

Change this line of code:
rep.DataSource = ds;
to this:
rep.DataSource = ds.Tables;

Answer 2

You can bind a repeater with a dataset but you need to be careful how you handle the tables inside that set.
this:
rep.DataSource = table;
rep.DataBind();
Should be:
rep.DataSource = {Some Dataset with more than one table};
rep.DataBind();
Then in your handler:
protected void rep_ItemDataBound(object sender, RepeaterItemEventArgs e)
{
if (e.Item.ItemType == ListItemType.Item)
{
GridView grdVw = e.Item.FindControl("grdVw") as GridView;
//EDIT: my vb was showing.
grdVw.DataSource = ((DataTable)e.Item.DataItem).Rows;
grdVw.DataBind();
}
}
This is not tested but it should work with a little fiddling. What you need to know is that within the repeater you need to be referencing the dataItem of the listItem in order to get a reference to the table. Also Tables are not iEnumerable so make sure you are binding on the rows object.